Chapter 1024: Chapter 1023
"Go on. I’ve got this," Rosemary said, her voice steady as a rock and her expression unflappable.
The lead investigator and the stenographer exchanged worried glances. "Ms. Rose, just be careful,okay? We’re right outside if you need us," they cautioned.
Rosemary nodded in affirmation.
Once the two had left the room, Yolanda glared at Rosemary with eyes blazing with hatred, as if she wished she could strike her dead right there and then.
"Don’t say I never gave you a chance," Rosemary suddenly declared, producing a small folding knife from her jacket and tossing it before Yolanda. "I won’t fight back. You’ve got three minutes."
Yolanda eyed the knife on the ground, her mind racing with doubts about whether this was some sort of trap Rosemary had set.
"You wanna kill me, right?" Rosemary taunted with a disinterested tone. "Here’s your shot."
Yolanda wasn’t about to let an opportunity slip by. She was already locked up, and her charges were heavy enough to put her on death row.
So, trap or not, she lunged for the knife, flipped it open, and thrust it at Rosemary.
Rosemary coolly started the stopwatch app on her phone.
Blinded by rage, Yolanda attacked with all her might, but Rosemary effortlessly dodged every attempt.
Not once in those three minutes did Yolanda manage to so much as nick Rosemary’s clothing, let alone.harm a single hair on her head.
On the contrary, Rosemary watched Yolanda’s self-doubt grow, her breath coming in ragged gasps, and said calmly, "Do you know why I gave you this chance? To show you that even though I was unarmed and standing still, you can’t hurt me. You’re not, nor will you ever be, in my league."
Enraged, Yolanda felt the previous wound on her leg, inflicted by Rosemary, reopening due to her frenetic movements. The bandage was soaked with fresh blood, and the pain made her forehead sweat
profusely.
"If you hadn’t slashed my hand and wounded my leg, it might have been a different story!" Yolanda spat back defiantly. "Stand still if you dare!"
Rosemary asked indifferently, "Do you know where I’ve just come from? Your foster mother, Yvonne, died five days ago. I’ve just seen her body."
Yolanda’s expression flickered with panic before she quickly composed herself.
Yolanda’s eyes, red with fury, bore into Rosemary.
"My guess is, on that day, you decided to kill me, but your foster mother found out. She tried to stop you, and in the heat of the argument, you killed her."
Her discomfort only solidified Rosemary’s suspicions.
"Do you know what I found on her clothes? In her dying moments, when she feared you’d take the blame, she scrawled ’suicide’ with her own blood. She didn’t finish the last stroke of ’suicide’ before she
passed."
Yolanda’s eyes snapped open in disbelief, unable to fathom that her adoptive mother, Yvonne, had left behind such a message.
"No, you’re lying, you’re making this up!" Yolanda’s emotions surged.
Rosemary pulled out her phone and showed Yolanda the message written on Yvonne’s clothes, saying indifferently, "You recognize her handwriting, don’t you?"
That hit Yolanda like a ton of bricks, sending her collapsing to the floor.
"You stabbed her with a knife, and the murder weapon was found near the river by your house, matching the wound on her body. It was your family’s kitchen knife."
Yolanda looked at Rosemary, stunned that she could find and infer all this.
"When you stabbed her, it wasn’t fatal. She died from suffocation. I’m guessing when you saw her bleeding, you didn’t dare take her to the hospital, afraid they’d ask too many questions. And maybe you were scared she’d wake up, stop your revenge, or even call the cops. So, you dug a hole in your backyard and buried her."
Yolanda couldn’t believe Rosemary had figured it out, shaking her head frantically, "No, it wasn’t like that."
Rosemary already knew from her expression that she was right, "Before you buried her alive, she must have begged you not to do something stupid, but rage and fear blinded you. In the end, when she knew there was no escape, she wrote ’suicide’ on her clothes, trying to protect you with her last breath."
Even facing death, Yvonne didn’t spend her precious moments calling for help, possibly because she was in too much pain, without her phone, or maybe because she wanted to protect Yolanda, to awaken the last bit of conscience in her.
Whatever her reason, she still had her daughter in her heart.
"No, no." Yolanda began to cry, and after a while, she collapsed, sobbing, "She overheard me talking about revenge, always telling me to stop being foolish. I didn’t listen, and then she threatened to call the police. She never truly put herself in my shoes!"
Tears streamed down Yolanda’s face as she spoke of her grief, "My real parents died, and I went from heiress of Tranquil City to nothing, my life plummeting from heaven to hell. But she never really
understood! Instead, she wanted me to forget my past as if it never happened!"
Yolanda felt a mix of hatred, anger, and injustice, "Her false compassion killed her! She was timid and afraid – why did she expect me to be the same?"
Rosemary watched her tear herself apart with grief, and asked calmly, "So you killed her?"
"If she hadn’t wanted to call the cops, to get them to talk me out of it, I never would have picked up that knife! I just wanted to scare her. But then she said if I was set on revenge, I might as well kill her first.
She thought I wouldn’t do it." Yolanda’s voice broke into sobs.
"So you hardened your heart?" Rosemary felt she understood what happened.
Seeing Yolanda’s emotional collapse, Rosemary didn’t press further, knowing she wouldn’t get more answers now.
She pushed open the interrogation room door and walked away, leaving the crying woman alone.
Rosemary wasn’t one to seek immediate revenge. She knew all too well that once she stepped away from this hellhole, there would be a line of others eager to settle scores with Yolanda.